1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a jig device for transporting and testing a semiconductor integrated circuit chip, simply called as ‘IC chip’ hereinafter. Particularly, the present invention relates to a novel jig device useful for transporting and testing a small and lightweight IC chip having test areas on both of front and back surfaces thereof and to a novel method for transporting and testing the same using the jig device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Up until now, there have been proposed a wide variety of conventional means for transporting an IC chip at its stage. According to the conventional means, an IC chip to be tested is picked-up from a tray or packet by a transporting device having handler and is conveyed to a predetermined test place, where the IC chip is put in a socket for testing electrical conductivities and other properties thereof.
A transporting device having a handler for conveying IC chips from one place to another place during their test stage is disclosed in Japanese published patent application (kokai) H07-294600. The transporting device has a handler equipped with a vacuum pad for sucking one surface of the IC chip. The vacuum pad attracts to pick-up the IC chip from a tray to convey it to a socket for testing, where electric terminals on front surface of the IC chip contact with measurement electrodes of the test socket.
The handler of the conventional transporting device has a vacuum pad for sucking to attract and grip almost the whole area of the front surface of the IC chip. However, such transporting device is not useful for handling some kinds of IC chips, such as IC chips of BGA (ball grid array package), PGA (pin grid array package) or LGA (land grid array package). As electric terminals and/or optical image pick-up elements of these IC chips are arranged on almost whole surfaces of their front and back surfaces, they can hardly have sufficient area on any surface for contacting with the vacuum pad. Therefore, it is difficult to handle such IC chips using the conventional devise.
If the handler has a mechanism for pinching an IC chip from transverse directions, the IC chip may be pinched to pick-up at side surfaces of the chip, other than front and back surfaces. However, two or more arms are necessary in order to pinch the IC chip and construction and mechanism of the handler may be complicated. Furthermore, such handler will be inapplicable to handle small IC chips, since small IC chips generally have no suitable portion to be pinched securely by the arms.
Moreover, conventional transforming devices have a function only to convey an IC chip and therefore it is necessary another means to set up the IC chip in test equipments after the conveyance. This results in that lead-time for test stage is still large.
As mentioned above, any conventional transporting device can hardly handle small IC chips having a lot of terminals or optical imaging elements on their front and back surfaces and it is applicable only for conveying IC chips. Therefore, a practical jig device useful for both of transporting and testing small IC chips is not known yet, for the time being.